


Alderaan Days

by EyeLoch



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Nostalgia, trouble adapting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-29
Updated: 2016-11-29
Packaged: 2018-09-03 01:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8691847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EyeLoch/pseuds/EyeLoch
Summary: Moreena Krai was a friend of Ezra Bridger, as seen for a handful of paragraphs in two tie-in novels.  She moved to Alderaan before the series started.However, Alderaan is very different from Lothal - how would she adapt, could she adapt?This story touches on such matters.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This story was heavily inspired by the Lothal headcanons of the amazing sheepfulsheepyardinspace on Tumblr: (https://sheepfulsheepyardinspace.tumblr.com/post/138384112244/place-headcanons-lothal)

In a word, Alderaan was perfect. 

That, Moreena Krai reflected, was the problem.  Where Alderaan had vast forests and rolling hills, Lothal had strip mines and weapons testing sites.  Lothal’s cities were clumps of grimy grey synth-stone and plastics, while Alderaan’s were impeccably toned and sculpted to the surrounding environment.  And, despite the fact that she now had to live in a city, the wide roads and frequent parkland meant even the change in lifestyle was denied as a reason for hating Alderaan.

Yet, she wished she wasn’t living here.  Little things, tiny differences just built up over time and made her wish she was still on Lothal. 

In many ways it started on the journey towards Alderaan.  While milling about in the mid-rim space port of Bleyas, having some food before the next leg of the flight to Alderaan, she saw two spacers exchange ships.  It was a tiny moment really, just an Asogian and a Draflago swapping code cylinders, yet she’d always thought of freighters like homes for their captains.

“I wonder,” she’d thought a little later, while chewing the last of her meal (fried nuts in some tart, reddish sauce), “would Ezra have found that strange?” After all, if you never had firm roots, to flit from one dwelling to another on a whim wouldn’t be so bizarre.

Even then though, she remembered his unconcealed joy when he first showed her his coms tower.  The delight he took in showing her around the (tiny) room and rusting balcony, or the hurt he hid when she asked where his rugs and blankets came from.

* * *

Arriving on Alderaan wasn’t much fun either – long queues (and having to deal with her little sis’s whining) put them all on quite the edge.  Then she met her gran.  Maryam Krai wasn’t an especially reasonable woman. In fact (in hindsight) it was quite impressive that she managed to not taint her sympathy with any lectures for the entire first week.

Schooling was where things really started to go downhill.  Thing is, the average adult on Alderaan could give you a complex discussion of at least one form of philosophy (and probably several forms of literature).  This isn’t some innate ability, but where Lothal would emphasise practical skills in its (minimal) formal education, Alderaan taught wordplay and complex thoughts.  By fourteen, Moreena really couldn’t catch up – no matter how many remedial classes she took – and she was easily perceptive enough to see derision, or worse, condescending sympathy.  With an uncommon skintone, bright red hair and a much more solid build than was strictly fashionable she had little choice but to stand out – or lose anything that still tied her to her home.

But to be Lothalian was near impossible here.  All the possessions from home were in some storage unit (“Far too unfashionable,” Grandmother had said.  “Do you want Moreena to make no friends?”). There was no way to get any of the traditional herbs, spices or weaving grasses. She had no doubt that her sis could learn to live here, but as for herself?

Even the food was utterly different – all delicate flavours and tiny portions – nothing at all like the large haunches of lothalope her family would roast with wild herbs, the casseroles they’d make with the leftovers or the heavily spiced jogan cakes served with blue cream. 

But perhaps what she hated the most about Alderaan was the defeat in her father’s eyes when the money to fight the imperial courts ran out; the quiet sobs of her younger sister as they entered hyperspace for the first time; the shaking, suppressed anger of her mother as the Bleyas’ spacers casually tossed out some of the family rugs when cargo space ran out.

Or perhaps the fact that the Lothal she wanted to return to was already vanishing before she left.


End file.
